Where the Wild Things Are: A Defense of Cheeseheads, the Chop, and Ecstatic Religion in the Stands

By Barbara Ehrenreich, Civilization magazine (www.civmag.com/)

| June 29, 2000

In a culture hungering for joyous communal ritual, Ehrenreich says that a little-noticed trend finds sports fans expressing themselves in more colorful and peaceful ways. "We do a lot of complaining about the lack of "community" in modern societies, but few have noted the absence of public and participatory festivities that can, however briefly, unite total strangers in ecstatic communion." And as players market themselves to the highest bidder and owners pack up and move their teams to new cities, she says that "fans may be left with nobody to get excited about--except each other."